OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Information Compression in Dynamic Information Disclosure Games
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2024
Year: 2024

We consider a two-player dynamic information design problem between a principal and a receiver -- a game is played between the two agents on top of a Markovian system controlled by the receiver's actions, where the principal obtains and strategically shares some information about the underlying system with the receiver in order to influence their actions. In our setting, both players have long-term objectives, and the principal sequentially commits to their strategies instead of committing at the beginning. Further, the principal cannot directly observe the system state, but at every turn they can choose randomized experiments to observe the system partially. The principal can share details about the experiments to the receiver. For our analysis we impose the truthful disclosure rule: the principal is required to truthfully announce the details and the result of each experiment to the receiver immediately after the experiment result is revealed. Based on the received information, the receiver takes an action when its their turn, with the action influencing the state of the underlying system. We show that there exist Perfect Bayesian equilibria in this game where both agents play Canonical Belief Based (CBB) strategies using a compressed version of their information, rather than full information, to choose experiments (for the principal) or actions (for the receiver). We also provide a backward inductive procedure to solve for an equilibrium in CBB strategies.
Evaluating Named Entity Recognition: A comparative analysis of mono- and multilingual transformer models on a novel Brazilian corporate earnings call transcripts dataset
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Since 2018, when the Transformer architecture was introduced, Natural Language Processing has gained significant momentum with pre-trained Transformer-based models that can be fine-tuned for various tasks. Most models are pre-trained on large English corpora, making them less applicable to other languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese. In our research, we identified two models pre-trained in Brazilian Portuguese (BERTimbau and PTT5) and two multilingual models (mBERT and mT5). BERTimbau and mBERT use only the Encoder module, while PTT5 and mT5 use both the Encoder and Decoder. Our study aimed to evaluate their performance on a financial Named Entity Recognition (NER) task and determine the computational requirements for fine-tuning and inference. To this end, we developed the Brazilian Financial NER (BraFiNER) dataset, comprising sentences from Brazilian banks' earnings calls transcripts annotated using a weakly supervised approach. Additionally, we introduced a novel approach that reframes the token classification task as a text generation problem. After fine-tuning the models, we evaluated them using performance and error metrics. Our findings reveal that BERT-based models consistently outperform T5-based models. While the multilingual models exhibit comparable macro F1-scores, BERTimbau demonstrates superior performance over PTT5. In terms of error metrics, BERTimbau outperforms the other models. We also observed that PTT5 and mT5 generated sentences with changes in monetary and percentage values, highlighting the importance of accuracy and consistency in the financial domain. Our findings provide insights into the differing performance of BERT- and T5-based models for the NER task.
Private graphon estimation via sum-of-squares
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2024
Year: 2024

We develop the first pure node-differentially-private algorithms for learning stochastic block models and for graphon estimation with polynomial running time for any constant number of blocks. The statistical utility guarantees match those of the previous best information-theoretic (exponential-time) node-private mechanisms for these problems. The algorithm is based on an exponential mechanism for a score function defined in terms of a sum-of-squares relaxation whose level depends on the number of blocks. The key ingredients of our results are (1) a characterization of the distance between the block graphons in terms of a quadratic optimization over the polytope of doubly stochastic matrices, (2) a general sum-of-squares convergence result for polynomial optimization over arbitrary polytopes, and (3) a general approach to perform Lipschitz extensions of score functions as part of the sum-of-squares algorithmic paradigm.
Energy Consumption in Wireless Systems Equipped with RES, UAVs, and IRSs
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2024
Year: 2024

The paper considers the characteristics of the energy budget for mobile base stations (BSs) in the form of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with Radio Frequency (RF) transceivers, Intelligent Reconfigurable Surfaces (IRSs), and Renewable Energy Sources (RESs). The obtained results highlight the benefits and challenges related to using the aforementioned mobile base stations from the energy side. The research cases took into account two types of UAV devices - multirotor and fixed-wing (airplane-like).
Semialgebraic Range Stabbing, Ray Shooting, and Intersection Counting in the Plane
Venue: arXiv cs.CG 2024
Year: 2024

Polynomial partitioning techniques have recently led to improved geometric data structures for a variety of fundamental problems related to semialgebraic range searching and intersection searching in 3D and higher dimensions (e.g., see [Agarwal, Aronov, Ezra, and Zahl, SoCG 2019; Ezra and Sharir, SoCG 2021; Agarwal, Aronov, Ezra, Katz, and Sharir, SoCG 2022]). They have also led to improved algorithms for offline versions of semialgebraic range searching in 2D, via lens-cutting [Sharir and Zahl (2017)]. In this paper, we show that these techniques can yield new data structures for a number of other 2D problems even for online queries: 1. Semialgebraic range stabbing. We present a data structure for $n$ semialgebraic ranges in 2D of constant description complexity with $O(n^{3/2+\varepsilon})$ preprocessing time and space, so that we can count the number of ranges containing a query point in $O(n^{1/4+\varepsilon})$ time, for an arbitrarily small constant $\varepsilon>0$. 2. Ray shooting amid algebraic arcs. We present a data structure for $n$ algebraic arcs in 2D of constant description complexity with $O(n^{3/2+\varepsilon})$ preprocessing time and space, so that we can find the first arc hit by a query (straight-line) ray in $O(n^{1/4+\varepsilon})$ time. 3. Intersection counting amid algebraic arcs. We present a data structure for $n$ algebraic arcs in 2D of constant description complexity with $O(n^{3/2+\varepsilon})$ preprocessing time and space, so that we can count the number of intersection points with a query algebraic arc of constant description complexity in $O(n^{1/2+\varepsilon})$ time. In particular, this implies an $O(n^{3/2+\varepsilon})$-time algorithm for counting intersections between two sets of $n$ algebraic arcs in 2D.
Gradient-based Fuzzy System Optimisation via Automatic Differentiation -- FuzzyR as a Use Case
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

Since their introduction, fuzzy sets and systems have become an important area of research known for its versatility in modelling, knowledge representation and reasoning, and increasingly its potential within the context explainable AI. While the applications of fuzzy systems are diverse, there has been comparatively little advancement in their design from a machine learning perspective. In other words, while representations such as neural networks have benefited from a boom in learning capability driven by an increase in computational performance in combination with advances in their training mechanisms and available tool, in particular gradient descent, the impact on fuzzy system design has been limited. In this paper, we discuss gradient-descent-based optimisation of fuzzy systems, focussing in particular on automatic differentiation -- crucial to neural network learning -- with a view to free fuzzy system designers from intricate derivative computations, allowing for more focus on the functional and explainability aspects of their design. As a starting point, we present a use case in FuzzyR which demonstrates how current fuzzy inference system implementations can be adjusted to leverage powerful features of automatic differentiation tools sets, discussing its potential for the future of fuzzy system design.
GT-Rain Single Image Deraining Challenge Report
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

This report reviews the results of the GT-Rain challenge on single image deraining at the UG2+ workshop at CVPR 2023. The aim of this competition is to study the rainy weather phenomenon in real world scenarios, provide a novel real world rainy image dataset, and to spark innovative ideas that will further the development of single image deraining methods on real images. Submissions were trained on the GT-Rain dataset and evaluated on an extension of the dataset consisting of 15 additional scenes. Scenes in GT-Rain are comprised of real rainy image and ground truth image captured moments after the rain had stopped. 275 participants were registered in the challenge and 55 competed in the final testing phase.
Glanceable Data Visualizations for Older Adults: Establishing Thresholds and Examining Disparities Between Age Groups
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2024
Year: 2024

We present results of a replication study on smartwatch visualizations with adults aged 65 and older. The older adult population is rising globally, coinciding with their increasing interest in using small wearable devices, such as smartwatches, to track and view data. Smartwatches, however, pose challenges to this population: fonts and visualizations are often small and meant to be seen at a glance. How concise design on smartwatches interacts with aging-related changes in perception and cognition, however, is not well understood. We replicate a study that investigated how visualization type and number of data points affect glanceable perception. We observe strong evidence of differences for participants aged 75 and older, sparking interesting questions regarding the study of visualization and older adults. We discuss first steps toward better understanding and supporting an older population of smartwatch wearers and reflect on our experiences working with this population. Supplementary materials are available at https://osf.io/7x4hq/.
DMAD: Dual Memory Bank for Real-World Anomaly Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Training a unified model is considered to be more suitable for practical industrial anomaly detection scenarios due to its generalization ability and storage efficiency. However, this multi-class setting, which exclusively uses normal data, overlooks the few but important accessible annotated anomalies in the real world. To address the challenge of real-world anomaly detection, we propose a new framework named Dual Memory bank enhanced representation learning for Anomaly Detection (DMAD). This framework handles both unsupervised and semi-supervised scenarios in a unified (multi-class) setting. DMAD employs a dual memory bank to calculate feature distance and feature attention between normal and abnormal patterns, thereby encapsulating knowledge about normal and abnormal instances. This knowledge is then used to construct an enhanced representation for anomaly score learning. We evaluated DMAD on the MVTec-AD and VisA datasets. The results show that DMAD surpasses current state-of-the-art methods, highlighting DMAD's capability in handling the complexities of real-world anomaly detection scenarios.
XPose: eXplainable Human Pose Estimation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Current approaches in pose estimation primarily concentrate on enhancing model architectures, often overlooking the importance of comprehensively understanding the rationale behind model decisions. In this paper, we propose XPose, a novel framework that incorporates Explainable AI (XAI) principles into pose estimation. This integration aims to elucidate the individual contribution of each keypoint to final prediction, thereby elevating the model's transparency and interpretability. Conventional XAI techniques have predominantly addressed tasks with single-target tasks like classification. Additionally, the application of Shapley value, a common measure in XAI, to pose estimation has been hindered by prohibitive computational demands. To address these challenges, this work introduces an innovative concept called Group Shapley Value (GSV). This approach strategically organizes keypoints into clusters based on their interdependencies. Within these clusters, GSV meticulously calculates Shapley value for keypoints, while for inter-cluster keypoints, it opts for a more holistic group-level valuation. This dual-level computation framework meticulously assesses keypoint contributions to the final outcome, optimizing computational efficiency. Building on the insights into keypoint interactions, we devise a novel data augmentation technique known as Group-based Keypoint Removal (GKR). This method ingeniously removes individual keypoints during training phases, deliberately preserving those with strong mutual connections, thereby refining the model's predictive prowess for non-visible keypoints. The empirical validation of GKR across a spectrum of standard approaches attests to its efficacy. GKR's success demonstrates how using Explainable AI (XAI) can directly enhance pose estimation models.
ProgrammableGrass: A Shape-Changing Artificial Grass Display Adapted for Dynamic and Interactive Display Features
Venue: arXiv cs.GR 2024
Year: 2024

There are various proposals for employing grass materials as a green landscape-friendly display. However, it is difficult for current techniques to display smooth animations using 8-bit images and to adjust display resolution, similar to conventional displays. We present ProgrammableGrass, an artificial grass display with scalable resolution, capable of swiftly controlling grass color at 8-bit levels. This grass display can control grass colors linearly at the 8-bit level, similar to an LCD display, and can also display not only 8-bit-based images but also videos. This display enables pixel-by-pixel color transitions from yellow to green using fixed-length yellow and adjustable-length green grass. We designed a grass module that can be connected to other modules. Utilizing a proportional derivative control, the grass colors are manipulated to display animations at approximately 10 [fps]. Since the relationship between grass lengths and colors is nonlinear, we developed a calibration system for ProgrammableGrass. We revealed that this calibration system allows ProgrammableGrass to linearly control grass colors at 8-bit levels through experiments under multiple conditions. Lastly, we demonstrate ProgrammableGrass to show smooth animations with 8-bit grayscale images. Moreover, we show several application examples to illustrate the potential of ProgrammableGrass. With the advancement of this technology, users will be able to treat grass as a green-based interactive display device.
OV9D: Open-Vocabulary Category-Level 9D Object Pose and Size Estimation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

This paper studies a new open-set problem, the open-vocabulary category-level object pose and size estimation. Given human text descriptions of arbitrary novel object categories, the robot agent seeks to predict the position, orientation, and size of the target object in the observed scene image. To enable such generalizability, we first introduce OO3D-9D, a large-scale photorealistic dataset for this task. Derived from OmniObject3D, OO3D-9D is the largest and most diverse dataset in the field of category-level object pose and size estimation. It includes additional annotations for the symmetry axis of each category, which help resolve symmetric ambiguity. Apart from the large-scale dataset, we find another key to enabling such generalizability is leveraging the strong prior knowledge in pre-trained visual-language foundation models. We then propose a framework built on pre-trained DinoV2 and text-to-image stable diffusion models to infer the normalized object coordinate space (NOCS) maps of the target instances. This framework fully leverages the visual semantic prior from DinoV2 and the aligned visual and language knowledge within the text-to-image diffusion model, which enables generalization to various text descriptions of novel categories. Comprehensive quantitative and qualitative experiments demonstrate that the proposed open-vocabulary method, trained on our large-scale synthesized data, significantly outperforms the baseline and can effectively generalize to real-world images of unseen categories. The project page is at https://ov9d.github.io.
Cross-Lingual Transfer for Natural Language Inference via Multilingual Prompt Translator
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Based on multilingual pre-trained models, cross-lingual transfer with prompt learning has shown promising effectiveness, where soft prompt learned in a source language is transferred to target languages for downstream tasks, particularly in the low-resource scenario. To efficiently transfer soft prompt, we propose a novel framework, Multilingual Prompt Translator (MPT), where a multilingual prompt translator is introduced to properly process crucial knowledge embedded in prompt by changing language knowledge while retaining task knowledge. Concretely, we first train prompt in source language and employ translator to translate it into target prompt. Besides, we extend an external corpus as auxiliary data, on which an alignment task for predicted answer probability is designed to convert language knowledge, thereby equipping target prompt with multilingual knowledge. In few-shot settings on XNLI, MPT demonstrates superiority over baselines by remarkable improvements. MPT is more prominent compared with vanilla prompting when transferring to languages quite distinct from source language.
MSLM-S2ST: A Multitask Speech Language Model for Textless Speech-to-Speech Translation with Speaker Style Preservation
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

There have been emerging research interest and advances in speech-to-speech translation (S2ST), translating utterances from one language to another. This work proposes Multitask Speech Language Model (MSLM), which is a decoder-only speech language model trained in a multitask setting. Without reliance on text training data, our model is able to support multilingual S2ST with speaker style preserved.
On Predictive planning and counterfactual learning in active inference
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

Given the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, understanding the foundations of intelligent behaviour is increasingly important. Active inference, regarded as a general theory of behaviour, offers a principled approach to probing the basis of sophistication in planning and decision-making. In this paper, we examine two decision-making schemes in active inference based on 'planning' and 'learning from experience'. Furthermore, we also introduce a mixed model that navigates the data-complexity trade-off between these strategies, leveraging the strengths of both to facilitate balanced decision-making. We evaluate our proposed model in a challenging grid-world scenario that requires adaptability from the agent. Additionally, our model provides the opportunity to analyze the evolution of various parameters, offering valuable insights and contributing to an explainable framework for intelligent decision-making.
Bin Packing Optimization via Deep Reinforcement Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

The Bin Packing Problem (BPP) has attracted enthusiastic research interest recently, owing to widespread applications in logistics and warehousing environments. It is truly essential to optimize the bin packing to enable more objects to be packed into boxes. Object packing order and placement strategy are the two crucial optimization objectives of the BPP. However, existing optimization methods for BPP, such as the genetic algorithm (GA), emerge as the main issues in highly computational cost and relatively low accuracy, making it difficult to implement in realistic scenarios. To well relieve the research gaps, we present a novel optimization methodology of two-dimensional (2D)-BPP and three-dimensional (3D)-BPP for objects with regular shapes via deep reinforcement learning (DRL), maximizing the space utilization and minimizing the usage number of boxes. First, an end-to-end DRL neural network constructed by a modified Pointer Network consisting of an encoder, a decoder and an attention module is proposed to achieve the optimal object packing order. Second, conforming to the top-down operation mode, the placement strategy based on a height map is used to arrange the ordered objects in the boxes, preventing the objects from colliding with boxes and other objects in boxes. Third, the reward and loss functions are defined as the indicators of the compactness, pyramid, and usage number of boxes to conduct the training of the DRL neural network based on an on-policy actor-critic framework. Finally, a series of experiments are implemented to compare our method with conventional packing methods, from which we conclude that our method outperforms these packing methods in both packing accuracy and efficiency.
Few-shot Object Localization
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Existing object localization methods are tailored to locate specific classes of objects, relying heavily on abundant labeled data for model optimization. However, acquiring large amounts of labeled data is challenging in many real-world scenarios, significantly limiting the broader application of localization models. To bridge this research gap, this paper defines a novel task named Few-Shot Object Localization (FSOL), which aims to achieve precise localization with limited samples. This task achieves generalized object localization by leveraging a small number of labeled support samples to query the positional information of objects within corresponding images. To advance this field, we design an innovative high-performance baseline model. This model integrates a dual-path feature augmentation module to enhance shape association and gradient differences between supports and query images, alongside a self query module to explore the association between feature maps and query images. Experimental results demonstrate a significant performance improvement of our approach in the FSOL task, establishing an efficient benchmark for further research. All codes and data are available at https://github.com/Ryh1218/FSOL.